Degen Stories....
04-21-2021
, 04:32 PM
05-03-2021
, 01:33 AM
08-31-2021
, 04:48 PM
Alright so this happened when I was about 18, three years ago. A bit of backstory, I was obsessed with a card game called "Magic: the Gathering". I didn't have a real job, so I would scrounge together whatever money I could win locally, then spend all of it on a trip to somewhere in the states to battle in a tournament.
I had set my sights on an event going on in Phoenix AZ, with about $400 in my bank account/no lines of credit/parents not going to help me. Well a flight was about $500 at the time, splitting an airbnb would end up being around $150, entry fee was about $100, and food costs would add up pretty quickly. So I had to get kinda creative in order to "afford" it. I ended up selling a bunch of cards from my collection to get around $600 together, so I etransfered my parents and they bought me a plane ticket. If it sounds desperate, back then I had the mindset of "I HAVE to play this tournament".
So now I have about $100 bankroll for a $100 entry fee tournament, in my mind I am totally prepared to "crush this". A couple days later I was on the plane headed to Phoenix for the first time in my life. Awesome!
I land in the PHX airport at around 12am. I leave the main area and head to the outside of security place in the airport. Get my wifi set up on my phone and go to text my buddies if they are landing soon/want to split an uber to the airbnb. No response. I wait for a little bit, and eventually my buddy messages me "I don't get in until tomorrow bro". Oh ****. In my haste to book the cheapest flight possible, I booked a flight that gets in a day early.
Well this is fine I figure, I can sleep in the airport (I'm totally exhausted by this point), and walk around the city the next day. Unfortunately, there is some sort of bullshit alarm testing thing going on in the airport, so every 10 minutes blaring alarms go off and wake me up. "**** this, I can't sleep through this ****" I think, and decide to venture off into the great unknown of downtown PHX at 1am.
Now I don't really have cash, and between poor spending decisions on airport food and bullshit foreign transaction fees I have about $50 in my bank account. I make my way to the train transit system, put some cash in for a ticket, and get on a train figuring I could maybe get some sleep on there.
Well 1am PHX transit is very sus, and I am surrounded by a bunch of ****ing junkies. Whatever, guess I'll stay awake so I don't robbed or some ****. Make the round trip around the downtown area, and the train suddenly stopped and everybody got off. Was the final stop, so I had to take my chances outside.
Drop-off was near some park area that was pretty sketchy (to be fair, everything probably looked sketchy at 2am). I did see some fast food joint in the distance, so I figured I'd make my way there. On the way some chick was screaming down the cops and advancing on them and they had tasers or guns drawn idk. Was kinda weird (no pics sry).
Eventually make it to the fast food place and buy a drink and some fries and set up shop to play some online MTG with the last couple dollars in my account. Eventually end up meeting up my friends and we head to the airbnb. Now I owe my buddy around $150, and need $100 for the entry fee of the event. I only have $50. So I tell him I'll settle with him at the end of the trip and he's like ok fine. The way it worked I also had a food bankroll from him, which was nice in my mind.
Well now I need some cash and pretty quickly. I need to register for the event, and get some cash to pay my buddy back. So I go straight to the venue when it opens and ship my deck to a vendor there for like 50% of the cost of the deck. Now I've got like $300, but no deck to actually play the tournament with.
Even though I don't have a deck, I know a bunch of people from the community and start sending out messages frantically asking for decks to borrow. Eventually end up scrounging together some sorta bad deck, enter the event and end up playing. End up cashing the event for like $200, which in my mind was a clear plus on the weekend (probably lost a total of ~1k including value lost from selling my deck). Bought some chocolate milk at a convenience store and took it to a restaurant which was pretty gas though.
Not as degen as some of these legendary masters of degeneracy, but for me staying afloat in a foreign place with like $50 felt pretty wild. This event stood out to me because I was homeless for a day, but I ran the scrape together all my money on a moon shot somewhere halfway across the continent, min cash and go back home many, many times in my career.
tldr - broke kid travels with no money, gets homeless for a day and degens an event with his entire bankroll
I had set my sights on an event going on in Phoenix AZ, with about $400 in my bank account/no lines of credit/parents not going to help me. Well a flight was about $500 at the time, splitting an airbnb would end up being around $150, entry fee was about $100, and food costs would add up pretty quickly. So I had to get kinda creative in order to "afford" it. I ended up selling a bunch of cards from my collection to get around $600 together, so I etransfered my parents and they bought me a plane ticket. If it sounds desperate, back then I had the mindset of "I HAVE to play this tournament".
So now I have about $100 bankroll for a $100 entry fee tournament, in my mind I am totally prepared to "crush this". A couple days later I was on the plane headed to Phoenix for the first time in my life. Awesome!
I land in the PHX airport at around 12am. I leave the main area and head to the outside of security place in the airport. Get my wifi set up on my phone and go to text my buddies if they are landing soon/want to split an uber to the airbnb. No response. I wait for a little bit, and eventually my buddy messages me "I don't get in until tomorrow bro". Oh ****. In my haste to book the cheapest flight possible, I booked a flight that gets in a day early.
Well this is fine I figure, I can sleep in the airport (I'm totally exhausted by this point), and walk around the city the next day. Unfortunately, there is some sort of bullshit alarm testing thing going on in the airport, so every 10 minutes blaring alarms go off and wake me up. "**** this, I can't sleep through this ****" I think, and decide to venture off into the great unknown of downtown PHX at 1am.
Now I don't really have cash, and between poor spending decisions on airport food and bullshit foreign transaction fees I have about $50 in my bank account. I make my way to the train transit system, put some cash in for a ticket, and get on a train figuring I could maybe get some sleep on there.
Well 1am PHX transit is very sus, and I am surrounded by a bunch of ****ing junkies. Whatever, guess I'll stay awake so I don't robbed or some ****. Make the round trip around the downtown area, and the train suddenly stopped and everybody got off. Was the final stop, so I had to take my chances outside.
Drop-off was near some park area that was pretty sketchy (to be fair, everything probably looked sketchy at 2am). I did see some fast food joint in the distance, so I figured I'd make my way there. On the way some chick was screaming down the cops and advancing on them and they had tasers or guns drawn idk. Was kinda weird (no pics sry).
Eventually make it to the fast food place and buy a drink and some fries and set up shop to play some online MTG with the last couple dollars in my account. Eventually end up meeting up my friends and we head to the airbnb. Now I owe my buddy around $150, and need $100 for the entry fee of the event. I only have $50. So I tell him I'll settle with him at the end of the trip and he's like ok fine. The way it worked I also had a food bankroll from him, which was nice in my mind.
Well now I need some cash and pretty quickly. I need to register for the event, and get some cash to pay my buddy back. So I go straight to the venue when it opens and ship my deck to a vendor there for like 50% of the cost of the deck. Now I've got like $300, but no deck to actually play the tournament with.
Even though I don't have a deck, I know a bunch of people from the community and start sending out messages frantically asking for decks to borrow. Eventually end up scrounging together some sorta bad deck, enter the event and end up playing. End up cashing the event for like $200, which in my mind was a clear plus on the weekend (probably lost a total of ~1k including value lost from selling my deck). Bought some chocolate milk at a convenience store and took it to a restaurant which was pretty gas though.
Not as degen as some of these legendary masters of degeneracy, but for me staying afloat in a foreign place with like $50 felt pretty wild. This event stood out to me because I was homeless for a day, but I ran the scrape together all my money on a moon shot somewhere halfway across the continent, min cash and go back home many, many times in my career.
tldr - broke kid travels with no money, gets homeless for a day and degens an event with his entire bankroll
09-01-2021
, 02:57 PM
09-01-2021
, 09:39 PM
09-01-2021
, 09:51 PM
09-10-2021
, 10:58 AM
So when the last of my friends turned 18, they wanted to go make the drive up to the same casino I got my butt kicked for $800 when I was 18. I say yes as im wanting to really go back. 3 of us make the drive up with varying rolls to gamble. Friend 1 has like 200 buck. Friend 2 has his entire paycheck, maybe 1000 bucks. He worked full time and went to school. This was his money to live as he had his own place and needed to eat too. I have like 150 bucks but just wanted to go have fun.
We drive up and I tell friend 2 to leave some of the money in my car. We are good friends but he is still skeptical and says na I got this, no worries.
Within minutes friend 1 come up shaking saying he just made 1k on a slot machine lol. I proceed to lose my 150 on bj. Friend 3 loses it all and needs to borrow gas money and can barely eat for 2 weeks.
We drive home, 2 of us hating life and 1 just loving it. Well im broke now too, thinking damn I need smoke and gas money. Convince friend 2 to let us chill at his place and we'll all smoke one. I tell friend 1 that made the 1k we should play poker. He says well what do you have to gamble with? I have a gps, tell him to put up 150 against it. He is like ok, why the hell not, I wanna play. I take his money in minutes haha. So im even, friend 1 is still up 850, friend 2 is thinking how degen he is and he lost 85 hours worth of pay in 5 minutes.
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We drive up and I tell friend 2 to leave some of the money in my car. We are good friends but he is still skeptical and says na I got this, no worries.
Within minutes friend 1 come up shaking saying he just made 1k on a slot machine lol. I proceed to lose my 150 on bj. Friend 3 loses it all and needs to borrow gas money and can barely eat for 2 weeks.
We drive home, 2 of us hating life and 1 just loving it. Well im broke now too, thinking damn I need smoke and gas money. Convince friend 2 to let us chill at his place and we'll all smoke one. I tell friend 1 that made the 1k we should play poker. He says well what do you have to gamble with? I have a gps, tell him to put up 150 against it. He is like ok, why the hell not, I wanna play. I take his money in minutes haha. So im even, friend 1 is still up 850, friend 2 is thinking how degen he is and he lost 85 hours worth of pay in 5 minutes.
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